Family

Monday morning (or should I say “afternoon”) check in

/ The Pastor / 3 Comments

I am finally back in the office…but a little late on getting to my blog.  If you could have seen the pile of stuff I had to deal with I think you would understand.  I enjoy getting away for awhile; its just the getting caught up that I don’t like.  But I think I am there.

Last night I had an AWESOME night…

…that is Point of Grace and I had third row, center aisle seats for this concert.  AND…it was free.  This was the finale of the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference that I attended this past week…and everything is free…it has been that way for 74 years.  This is an amazing conference and I am always blown away that they can put on such an event based solely on the contributions of generous supporters. 

Each morning started with prayer and then a Bible study.  At 10am we have some fellowship time before we head to the “communities” (small group sessions) at 10:30.  There isn’t anything going on in the afternoon but we reconvene at 7:15pm for the evening worship celebration time with a different (usually a nationally known) speaker (i.e.  Tuesday night was Phil Vischer, the founder of Veggie Tales).  And did I say that all of this is FREE?

The “community” I attended in the mornings was lead by Phil Vischer and his brother Rob (a law professor at St. Thomas Law School in the Twin Cities).  They spoke about Christ and Culture.  I missed the Monday and Tuesday communities but I am glad I made it to Wednesday’s.  Here Rob Vischer spoke about the Christian perspective on family law.  The basic premise was the evolution of the same sex marriage debate.  This is something that has been brewing for quite a few decades.  But what was really scary is where the law is headed in the future.  Basically the family unit is being de-valued and more emphasis is being placed on individual liberty.  Hence…people starting to be allowed to decided who’s in their family.  Rob said that on the horizon the next debate will be polygamy because if two men or two women want to get married, why not expand that definition to include more people.  The direction that family law is headed is very scary.  This was indeed an eye opening “community”.

So much more happened this past week but I am still trying to process everything.  I got a feeling that as other learnings begin to bubble up that they will soon find themselves on the pages of this blog.  But in the mean time I will take my leave of this topic.

In the future
There are some other blog topics that I have started that I haven’t dealt with for a while…and I am going to be returning to these topics shortly:
(1) Evangelism — at the end of July I was invited to participate in a meeting at the ELCA headquarters in Chicago.  My bishop along with a synod minister and our synod V.P. attended this meeting.  We heard a number of presentations and participated in some fruitful brainstorming for the synod.  I also got appointed to the “Serving in God’s World” board (evangelism and outreach) for the SW MN synod.  I am looking forward to writing more about my involvement here.

(2) Business meeting model vs. Ministry meeting model — this was something concerning church councils.  Wrote a while back about my efforts of changing how our church council looks at themselves.  We need to be a group of people focused on advancing the mission of Christ in the world around us.  Someone commented and asked me how I was going to do this and I responded that I was still working on it.  Well…I want to return to this topic in the near future.  I have a council meeting this week and I hope to implement a new “agenda item”.  I will say more about this later.

(3) Learnings from the Okoboji Lakes Bible and Missionary Conference.

Whew…that’s a lot of stuff coming up and I am excited to get started writing.  I guess time off really did me some good.

Anyway…take care and God bless!

-edh-

Anniversary

/ The Pastor / 6 Comments

It’s hard to believe that our (mine and Connie’s) big weekend was only four years ago.  Four years ago today friends and family from all over came for a long weekend.  The festivities started on a Friday with my ordination (by that time I had been serving at Salem for about a month).  Representatives from Salem made the 2 1/2 hour trip up to Dawson to be there for the ordination service as well.  The council president processed in with Salem’s processional cross and recessed out with it (I had heard of that idea from a classmate of mine).  My grandma read scripture (she said she was almost in tears as she read, which misted up my eyes).  My mom and dad presented my stole to Bishop Jon (a stole my mom had specially made for me). Then Bishop Jon did something that I will always remember.  After the pastors came forward to lay hands on me, Bishop Jon invited my family to come forward to do the same thing.  It was such a powerful moment for me.  It wasn’t just one select person laying hands on me, but the Church; the community of believers; my family.  I will forever remember that moment and day.

But I would be in a lot of trouble if I did not mention the BIG part of the fun weekend.  July 2 is my ordination anniversary, but July 3 is my wedding anniversary (4 years married to my lovely bride).  Like I said…it was a big and fun weekend.  Connie figured that since family was coming for the wedding anyway that we might as well have my ordination that same weekend.  And of all the people involved, I think my mom was the happiest about that arrangement.  Since my mom really didn’t have much to do with the wedding planning, my mom took charge of my ordination planning (I planned the worship and mom took everything else).  And my mom did a great job.  Before the service, my folks hosted a BBQ at the house and after the worship service, mom arranged a ice cream social outside the church on the sidewalk.  Leave it to my mom to get creative like that.

But as I look back…the past four years have flown right by.  Connie and I have had some wonderful moments here and we can definitely see having many more years of wonderful moments here in Jackson.  We have made some lifelong friends here and the longer we are here the more Jackson feels like home.

How many more years will we be here?  That’s a tough question to answer.  The litmus test for me is this:  Does God have work for me to do here?  And as of now the answer is “Yes”.  So with that I continue my ministry and our life here in Jackson at Salem and Belmont Lutheran Churches.  And hopefully…in a year…you will find me writing about a wonderful five years of ministry here in Jackson, MN.

-edh-